Page 122 of South of Nowhere

As she walked away, she gave a faint laugh. “Pray for no short circuits in the detonators.”

Just after she cruised down the hill in her SUV, a dark gray pickup made its way to the command post and stopped.

“She’s here,” Dorion whispered to Colter.

It was Mary Dove. The vehicle rocked to a stop. The lean woman, with the same silver braid as yesterday, climbed out. Usually dressed in a long skirt, today she wore jeans and a work shirt under a black leather jacket. Cowboy boots. The F-150 featured a rifle rack in the back window and Shaw noted that her favorite weapon, a Winchester .308—the same as Bear’s gun—sat beneath a Ruger cylinder-fed .22 carbine, silver and black.

There was no greeting other than nods among the Shaw family. They had, after all, breakfasted together just yesterday. Shaw made introductions, and Mary Dove took in the names of those present. Shaw knew she would be memorizing them and making minute observations about each one.

She would also be noting in particular her son’s own grim expression, its genesis: Annie Coyne’s arrest.

Absurd.

And yet Debi Starr presented sufficient probable cause to the difficult magistrate to justify the warrant.

He recalled too the blaze in Coyne’s eyes when the subject of Redding and his father, and the old man’s “theft” of the farmland years ago at a poker table, was brought up.

He chose not to play the percentage game as to her innocence or guilt.

Mary Dove was regarding the levee. “My. It looks fragile. What’s the prognosis?”

The word came to her naturally. She was, after all, a medical doctor.

Dorion said, “We just don’t know.”

Tolifson offered, “And there could be another IED inside.”

Colter said, “We’re getting bomb curtains to drape over the top. Army Corps of Engineers. The woman you passed on the way up here. Forty minutes.”

“And what’s our percentage that’ll work?” she asked her son.

Everyone in the family knew his numeric approach to decision making (even his nieces, who recently estimated the odds that he could be talked into buying ice cream on any particular visit at eighty-two percent).

“Have to keep that one blank for the time being. Not enough data.”

The woman looked down at the village. “And your remainer is still there? Mrs. Petaluma.”

Dorion nodded and pointed to the house and the garden.

Starr grimaced. “And just so you know. She’s armed.”

“Has she shot anybody?”

“Not in recent memory,” the policewoman said

“And you speak the same language?” Starr asked.

“I speak Ohlone and some Miwok. And I would think, her being from around here, she speaks mostly Miwok. But they’re related languages. She’ll understand me well enough.”

Tolifson said, “As long as we can make her appreciate the danger. But I was thinking you could appeal to her heart. Say the town thinks of her as a valuable resident. We’d be devastated if anything happened to her. And—to be frank—if the levee does go, we’re going to have our hands full…” His voice faded, as often happened, when Mary Dove turned her gaze toward someone.

“With all respect, Mayor. I’m not asking about language for accurate translation. She understood everything you’ve said to her and everything she heard on the TV. This is something different.” She eyed the man closely. “There’s an expressionallinik liwwap.It means ‘white people talking.’ ”

“Not trusting what we’re telling her.”

“Partly that. Also, you’re not getting where she’s coming from. Now, I’ll see what I can do.” Mary Dove walked to the truck.

“No,” Dorion and Shaw said simultaneously.

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